Trumpcare a Disaster Because Paul Ryan ‘Just a Self-Promoter’ Who is In Above His Head

Want to know why the Republican health care plan is such an unmitigated disaster? This is probably preaching to the choir, but according to Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman, we should not “presume that [Paul] Ryan and company have any idea what they’re doing.”

That doesn’t stop Donald Trump from lying about it, tweeting this morning the appalling claim,

Of course, Donald Trump is excited because Ryan’s plan is not, in fact, a healthcare plan at all but a $274 billion tax cut for the rich.

To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.

Besides focusing on tax cuts rather than actual healthcare, there is a reason Trumpcare is already worse than Obamacare and that reason is to be found in the plan’s author, Paul Ryan.

Krugman explains that Ryan is not a policy entrepreneur, but rather somebody who portrays one (and you thought Republicans hated entertainers):

“What I’d say is that Ryan is not, in fact, a policy entrepreneur. He’s just a self-promoter, someone who has successfully sold a credulous media on a character he plays: Paul Ryan, Serious, Honest Conservative Policy Wonk.”

And the GOP is up against an already existing healthcare plan in the Affordable Care Act that actually works pretty well, as he explained in a series of tweets Saturday morning:

As Krugman demonstrates, Obamacare delivered on its promises. Nobody has argued that it could not, and should not, be improved upon, but that was not the Republican plan. They had no plan. Krugman argues that,

“Everything else about the AHCA looks slapdash, like something thrown together in a few days by people who hadn’t thought at all” about the consequences and as a result,

“[T]his sure looks as if they were still dithering about the whole principle of their Obamacare replacement until at most a few weeks ago, and didn’t work with CBO because they had nothing to work with.”

There is no excuse for this when you consider they had seven years to think about it. The reason Spicer had such a short stack of plans to show is because they didn’t put any work into it, and “this looks like amateur hour because it is.” Republicans, says Krugman, have no idea what a workable plan would involve.

That’s a sad tale, when you consider they had a workable plan in front of them all along. It’s called Obamacare.

Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.